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• Tuesday, December 2, 2008 11:29 AM

  Beyond the shopping/saving debate

  I figure in that small percentage of people who own their home, have no credit card debt (for the simple reason that I use a debit card).

  For the last item which apparently "guarantees" financial security : the well paid job, just how many of us can honestly lay claim to this one as an absolute certainty (not me, I stopped working last year) ?

  If there is one thing that I learned from reading a great economist, it's that there is no such thing as financial security.

  There is no such thing as autonomy, or financial independence, either.

  For the simple reason that anything, just anything could happen tomorrow to radically change my situation, and yours, my fellow human beings.

  These days I feel like getting "things".

  Things I will be able to pass on to my children ; things that have value, and are beautiful (subjective, and emotional, but yes, we are all hopefully emotional ; we have managed to convince ourselves that being desensitized is the same thing as being rational...)

  And I also feel like giving my money away. To people who are doing things that I believe in.

  (NOT CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS BUT PEOPLE)

  But... spare me.

  I don't feel like BUYING/SELLING.

  Protestant insistance on turning every human exchange into an occasion to BUY/SELL has succeeded in two things : permanently driving me out of the U.S. in search of a place to live that has not been overwhelmed by mercantilism and

  Convincing me that MONEY is definitely the root of ALL EVIL.

  —Frenchie Read Frenchie's other letters
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